David Frye – I Am The President album art
Two typefaces from Photo-Lettering’s library in chromatic use: the open and shaded E style of Dave Davison’s Carousel with blue top and brown bottom halves and slightly widened proportions, and Stars and Stripes – a patriotic offshoot of PLINC Madison – in red and blue, set on a circle.
Illustrator Edward Sorel’s rendition of the Great Seal of the United States depicts comedian David Frye as the (not so bald) American eagle having a tight grip on the targets of his impersonations, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, William F. Buckley, Hubert Humphrey, and Nelson Rockefeller.
The motto E pluribus unum is replaced by “And make no mistake about that”. The obituary for Frye published by The Record/Herald News in 2011 comments on the context of this line:
[…] his most memorable character by far was Nixon, whom Mr. Frye portrayed as a tortured soul with darting eyes, flaring brows, scowling lips and deep-seated insecurities. The longer the president stayed in office, the deeper Mr. Frye’s impressions drilled into Nixon’s psyche.
“My administration has taken crime out of the streets,” Mr. Frye’s Nixon said in one Watergate-era routine, “and put it in the White House, where I can keep an eye on it.”
Mr. Frye perfected his impression by matching Nixon’s vocal tones and modulations, by adopting a few of the president’s catch phrases, such as “Let me make this perfectly clear,” and by creating a few of his own, including “I am the president, and make no mistake about that.” He practiced in front of a mirror every day.
Whether he intended it, Mr. Frye transformed nightclub mimicry into sharp-edged political satire that drew a national following. The mere title of his best-selling 1969 comedy album “I Am the President” managed to make Nixon sound both pompous and weak-kneed.
